> ...People want a lot of things from you and your project, big companies are using the project and need a lot of things as well from it in order to keep their projects healthy, but in most of the cases this is a talk in just one way. There are more people interest in have things from you, than help! And this crashed me
If they are all users of your open source software and are begging for features for free, ignore them and focus on yourself. This is why many developers always prioritise paid support or sponsors and the choice of license is also very important.
It's really simple, either the user does the work and contributes the fixes for free (depending on the license) or the user pays for the maintainer to prioritise the work at a cost.
Either way, I will never do free open source work on someone else's deadline and will always do it in my own time. Unless you're willing to pay me to add a feature or support.
We don't know how much pay/sponsorship was the issue here. It seems to me that the maintainer was simply overworked and slept very, very little.
This is bearable for a certain amount of time but after that one really has to look after themselves, regardless of financial interests or a crash is inevitable.
True, burnout is inevitable with a single developer. That's why paid support or sponsorship is used to hire more developers / contributors to reduce the risk of the project stagnating due to one developer burning out.
Either way, no developer wants to do free work on someone else's deadline and it is always done in their own time, unless they want to pay for the effort.
i would say overwork and no/low pay are the same thing.
If you have a large amount of work being demanded of you by users/companies, then it's time to charge money for the time that would've taken. The charge should be big enough to replace your day job. If it's not, then don't do it, except for any fun bits that you would've already done.
If they are all users of your open source software and are begging for features for free, ignore them and focus on yourself. This is why many developers always prioritise paid support or sponsors and the choice of license is also very important.
It's really simple, either the user does the work and contributes the fixes for free (depending on the license) or the user pays for the maintainer to prioritise the work at a cost.
Either way, I will never do free open source work on someone else's deadline and will always do it in my own time. Unless you're willing to pay me to add a feature or support.